What's a good Customer Acquisition Cost?
Karbon Agency's target for Customer Acquisition Cost is $50.00 or lower. That is Karbon's own grading target, not a published industry average. Total cost to acquire one paying customer. Excellent is $20.00 or lower (Karbon target), and the minimum acceptable tier is $100 or lower (Karbon target).
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The three tiers Karbon grades against — and where each comes from
| Tier | Value | What it means | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | $100 | The floor. Below this, something is broken. | Karbon target |
| Recommended | $50.00 | The tier a healthy campaign should hit. | Karbon target |
| Excellent | $20.00 | Top-tier performance worth defending. | Karbon target |
Lower is better for this metric.
How it's calculated
Total Sales & Marketing Spend / New CustomersWhy Customer Acquisition Cost matters
Sets the ceiling on how much you can spend to grow. If CAC exceeds first-purchase revenue, you need strong retention or high LTV to justify the investment.
Karbon target
No independent public benchmark exists for Customer Acquisition Cost as Karbon measures it. The tiers above are Karbon Agency's own grading targets for local-business campaigns, not an industry average, and we don't cite one we haven't found.
Customer Acquisition Cost by industry
Where does your Customer Acquisition Cost land?
Karbon Agency grades every client campaign against these exact tiers, live on a dashboard — no guessing, no quarterly PDFs.